“They look for a job. You know, the statistics are totally — I don’t know if they’re done for some politician, I don’t know when this started, but you look for a job, you can’t find one, you give up looking for a job, which people have given up,” he said.

“They’re great people — they want to work, they want to make good money, and they can’t find a job,” he said. “They’re essentially, for statistical purposes, they’re considered employed. So the number doesn’t reflect.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the national unemployment rate at 5.3 percent in June.

“You know, somebody actually last week said we have a 40 percent unemployment [rate], so I’ve been saying 19 to 21 percent,” Mr. Trump said. “But somebody actually came out last week and said we have a 40 percent [rate], and they might very well be right.”

“Our country is suffering. We’re going down. We have people that are incompetent doing it, and if you have Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush, it’s going to be more of the same, and we’re not going to have a country left anymore,” he said.